Holiday Lights Contest (whitebearpress): How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the Holiday Lights Contest and why

The Holiday Lights Contest is a seasonal photo vote run by White Bear Press, the newspaper publisher based at Bloom Avenue in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Supporters come from the paper's readership: people who follow the publisher, live in or around White Bear Lake, and want to celebrate the most impressive holiday decorations in their community. Unlike the publisher's reader's choice ballots, which spread across dozens of business categories, this programme has a single seasonal subject, decorated homes and displays, which makes it one of the easiest ballots in the market to explain to a supporter.

The ballot lives on Second Street, the contest platform White Bear Press uses for all of its promotions. The live programme page sits at whitebearpress.secondstreetapp.com/Holiday-Lights-Contest, and the publisher runs everything from its own Second Street account, so supporters who know the paper's other ballots will recognise the interface immediately.

For supporters, the appeal is simple: a decorated display is something neighbours can judge on sight, so the ballot turns the holiday season itself into a friendly local competition. For the publisher, it is a community feature that keeps readers returning to its platform between its larger reader's choice cycles.

The dated record for this holiday ballot

Confirmed editions of this programme date to 2023 and 2024, and the most recent ballot carried a window that opened on November 18, 2025 and closed on January 5, 2026. That window is now closed. Taken together, the years place the contest firmly in the holiday season, opening in mid November and running through early January, which is the shape a lights contest would need to catch displays at their best.

The 2025-26 window is the only one whose exact open and close dates are published in full. For earlier editions the platform listing carries years but not a printed date pair, so the November to January pattern rests on the latest cycle alone. White Bear Press has not stated when the next edition opens, and the platform shows the promotion as closed, so until a new ballot is posted the closing status is the operative fact.

The organizer has left three things off the page: the category list, any per-supporter vote limit, and the rules on eligibility; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Those three gaps matter to anyone planning a serious push, because they determine how a supporter can split a vote and how often a person can return. They are also the facts most likely to shift from cycle to cycle, which is why they belong to the live ballot rather than to any reference page.

One practical note follows from the dates: because the window spans the turn of the year, a display photographed in early December is still in the running into January, and a late surge of support after the holidays is possible on this ballot in a way it is not on ballots that end in December.

How a supporter votes today

Voting happens on the Second Street page White Bear Press hosts. The mechanic is photo voting: the ballot displays entries as pictures, a supporter selects the display they want to back, and submits the vote on the page. Because the confirmed window ended on January 5, 2026, the page currently reports the promotion as closed and will not accept a vote until the organizer posts a new edition.

Three things a supporter should know before the next window opens. First, the ballot lives at a stable address on the publisher's Second Street account, so typing the domain directly and finding the Holiday Lights Contest listing is the most reliable route. Second, the promotion type means votes attach to photo entries, so a household hoping to win should make sure its display photographs well at night, since that is the image voters actually see. Third, Second Street ballots commonly show their rules on the page itself during an open window, and any daily-vote allowance will be stated there rather than in advance.

How often a single person may cast a vote, and whether returning daily is permitted, is nowhere printed; that rule is worth checking on the live page once a new window opens. Anyone hoping to boost a particular display can share the ballot link with friends and neighbours while the window is open, which is the channel the format is built around. Outside the window, none of this applies, because the page simply is not accepting participation.

Where this ballot sits among Minnesota contests

Minnesota has a busy public-vote calendar, and this programme occupies a distinct corner of it. White Bear Press is a community publisher, so its Holiday Lights Contest answers to a single hometown audience, while several of the state's bigger ballots are broad reader's choice competitions run by other publishers. Neighbours on this site include Best of the Midwest, Minnesota's Best, and Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area, each a best-of ballot with its own publisher behind it. Further up the state, CommunityVotes Duluth, CommunityVotes Rochester, and Best of the Best (Duluth News Tribune) cover the Duluth and Rochester markets.

What separates the Holiday Lights Contest from all of them is its subject and its season. The best-of ballots ask readers to choose favourite businesses across many categories during spring and summer windows; this programme asks one question about decorated displays and runs it through the holidays. Its window stretching into early January gives it a stretch of calendar largely to itself, and its photo format gives it a visual pull that category ballots do not have.

In practice, that means this contest rewards a single clear ask, vote for this display, while a multi-category ballot spreads attention. For a business or household entering, it means the campaign is narrower and the holiday timing does much of the promotion on its own, since lights are already what people are looking at in December.

Strengthening support for a display on this ballot

Because the contest is a single-subject photo vote, support campaigns here look different from the multi-category ballots on the same publisher's platform. The confirmed window ran from November 18 to January 5, so a household or business planning a push should build it around the weeks when decorations are newly up and the ballot is fresh. White Bear Press has said nothing in print about outside help for this programme, so the rules on the ballot page during an open window are the authority; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The strongest legitimate channel is local word of mouth: share the ballot link with neighbours, community groups and the people who already stop to look at the display, and make the ask while the window is open. Tactics that suit photo ballots generally are set out in our votes guide. Anything a paid service might do is a separate question from what the organizer permits, and no purchase can be assumed to fit rules the organizer has not stated; our position on that distinction is covered at buy award votes.